


no tender thing that grew in salt

by Ias



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Complicated Relationships, Drunk Sex, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 18:27:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17167070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: "Well," James says dryly. "I can see my presence was quite urgently required."Francis bares his teeth in a grin that hangs on his face like an empty coat. "I hope," he says, finding his tongue an awkward thing to maneuver, "that you did not trouble to stir yourself from Erebus solely to drink my brandy."





	no tender thing that grew in salt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

 

Francis hears the door to Terror's great cabin open, and shut once more. The rustle of heavy outer garments removed; the squeak as they are placed upon the slightly loose peg. Heavy boots, moving across the floor. Absent—markedly so—is the sound of Jopson’s quiet assistance.

Francis had sent him to bed early. And then, he had ordered the signal sent to Erebus: one requesting the presence of his second, at James Fitzjames’s earliest convenience.

Oh, it had been foolish. Foolish and foolhardy, to coax James out into the interminable night, clear and moon-bright as it was, and with no sign of the creature in weeks.

But the groan of the ice seems to press in on his skull, he is alone without the luxury of loneliness, and he finds himself quite incapable of regret. He wants James here, to berate him or mock him or simply to laugh; but chiefly he wants James here in the most base and beastly sense; in a way that he is certain that one day there will be an accounting for.

But tonight, he signals Erebus and drinks the precise amount of whiskey required to feel no concern for James’s safety on the long walk across the ice.  

From his bunk, he listens to the booted footfalls traverse the creaking wood of the great cabin. The door to his own berth is ajar, a sliver of invitation; but his visitor takes his time, damn him, meandering over to the bottle of brandy, mostly full, beside its much emptier counterpart. Francis listens to the clink of a glass, the glug of a healthy portion being poured. And then, at long last, James’s footsteps wander to him.

His face is still red from the cold as he pushes the door open, a snifter of brandy cupped in his fingers. He lingers in the doorway and then leans there, eyes wandering over the sight before him. 

"Well," James says dryly. "I can see my presence was quite urgently required." 

Francis bares his teeth in a grin that hangs on his heavy face like an empty coat. "I hope," he says, finding his tongue an awkward thing to maneuver, "that you did not trouble to stir yourself from Erebus solely to drink my brandy."

“It is not as if you intend to drink it yourself,” James says, and steps into Francis’s cabin at last. The door slides closed behind him with a finality much like relief; the snifter of brandy dangles loosely from his fingers, its contents dark as blood.

“Were you this deep in your cups when you sent for me?” James asks. His voice is always low, but in the closeness of Francis's quarters it seems to settle on his skin with the weight of velvet.

“No,” Francis says, rolling the syllable around in his mouth. “But you took your bloody time about getting here.”

“I’ve duties to attend to that don’t involve your whims, Francis.”

Francis tips his head forward, the better to raise his eyebrows. “Yet here you are.”

Were Francis less lost to drink, his words would have riled James instantly. But now, as he slumps against the wall behind his bunk in the semidarkness of his cabin, spread-legged, staring up at his second through bleary eyes—now, in such circumstances, there is no trace of anger on James’s face. Merely something which might resemble thoughtfulness; a man weighing his options.

James raises the snifter to his nose, and breathes it in. “Here I am." Tilting his head back, he downs the contents of his glass in a single swallow, the movement of his throat drawing Francis’s eye and keeping it. With an idle carelessness, James lets the empty glass dangle from his fingertips before sliding it onto Francis’s desk, where it will not get in the way.

He steps between Francis’s knees. His boots nudge at Francis’s insole, and with a compliance Francis is too blessedly drunk to question, he nudges his feet further apart. There will come a time in the very near future when Francis will despise James and himself in equal measure for it; now, hasn’t the will nor desire to conjure up his dignity. The alcohol is a warm weight in his veins; he is loose and he is open, hollow-feeling, soft; he wants James to push into that softness and he wants to be helpless to resist it.

“And what will you do,” James muses, his voice softer now, “when I no longer see fit to brave life and limb for the pleasure of your company?”

His face is—tender. Softened by something more than candlelight. The expression is so unexpected that it is almost foreign. His touch, when it comes, is light; a brush of fingertips over Francis’s cheek, which drift up to his brow like a ship on an ill wind.

"I don't foresee that happening any time soon." 

James makes a sound of dismissive amusement. His fingers brush at Francis's forelock, card it back into place. Francis blinks up at him with a kind of brute stupidity, a sense that he has stumbled and not yet regained his balance.

“What did you ask me here for, Francis?” James says.

In lieu of answering, Francis acts. His hand is a senseless, ungentle thing; it paws at James’s trousers with no grace but certainly with enthusiasm. Or at the very least, impatience; but the briskness of Francis’s desire does not avail him, and he’s only managed to fumble open two trouser buttons before James’s hands gently push his away. Francis tilts his head back to glare at James towering above him. In the poor light, the lines on his cheeks become deep slashes; his eyes become black with all the softness of night, all its solitude and oblivion.

James sinks to his knees.

The continuity of events becomes muddled. James’s sudden closeness, the unexpected lightness of his fingers at Francis’s trousers. They make short work where Francis’s had only fumbled, and watching them part the fabric and draw out his cock is as pleasing a sight as Francis has ever known.

But as fine as James’s hands are at their task, they are not what Francis had in mind. “James,” he says, petulant as he tugs ineffectually at whatever of James’s clothes he can reach. Again James deters him. Francis is opening his mouth to complain precisely when James bows his head like a penitent sinner, and opens his mouth.

Francis is so drink-addled that he can make no sense of what James is doing until he feels the hot, sweet warmth of his mouth closing around the head of his cock. The remaining breath goes out of him in a grunt, coarse and unlovely; but James takes no issue or heed. Francis is still soft yet, whiskey making him slow to rise; James sucks at him all the same, rolling him over his tongue, an awkward and rhythmless endeavor that nonetheless achieves the desired effect. Francis’s cock stiffens; the rest of him remains as limp as a doll, the thought of all movement a sacrilege. He’s pinned to his bunk by James’s mouth on his cock, the feeling so sharp it goes straight through him; his booted feet tilt on the floor and within them his toes curl. His hand travels to rest on the back of James’s head, too heavy to do anything but lay against his hair and feel the bobbing of his movements twice-over.

In this moment James has him utterly. With luck, Francis will not recall that thought once the drink has left him. He recognizes the shape of it, has seen its ilk before, and such sentiments sit uneasily on his sober mind and quite comfortably when he is drunk.

For a while he drifts, the pleasure building slowly. He floats on it like the thawed sea, feels it rock him like the long-absent tide. James’s hand circles his cock as the other goes to work between his own legs; whatever has driven him to this strange act, it is certainly not charity. Francis can feel the soft hums of satisfaction in the back of James’s throat.

James is so gentle with him. It is not gentleness Francis wants or deserves; gentleness sticks in his throat like the pit of a peach, sweet and choking. Francis makes a low noise, a strangled breath which betrays him. Without even the courtesy of giving Francis time to master himself, James pulls back to fix him with a stare Francis would be unable to interpret even with the benefit of his faculties.

“That bad?” James says, a note of humor; no pity, thank Christ. The one thing Francis could not abide.

“Harder,” he says, in lieu of an answer; and this time when he pushes James’s mouth to his cock, James holds his gaze as he goes. There is no sane reason why James should permit this, but they are far past sanity now. Have trespassed its bounds and its judgments and found themselves stranded here.

This time, James only mouths at the head, a sheer torment to bear, before nuzzling into the juncture of Francis’s groin. His mouth drags skin and coarse hair, kisses the crease of Francis's thigh; an action he has never practiced upon Francis's lips. It's the drink which permits it; the veil between their true selves and the men they are in this moment, in this room. James could have anything he wanted from him. This is what he wants: this tender affection while Francis himself is too soft to realize why he shouldn't permit it. 

Francis lets his head loll back to hit the wall behind him with a dull thumb. The ceiling is dark. There is no escaping the shadows here. In the summer they are baked hard and cold beneath the ever-present sun; in the winter they bleed into everything. Absent James’s ministrations, his cock stands raw and abandoned in the chilly air.

“James,” he mumbles, reaching for him; his hand comes roughly to cup James’s cheek, and for a brief moment he feels the soft press of James’s damp and swollen mouth upon his palm like something from a fevered dream, too hot and too raw. When James’s mouth returns to his cock a moment later Francis still feels the damp on the heel of his hand like a brand.  

At last Francis buries his hands in James’s hair with abandon, too exhausted and heavy to rock his hips the way he wants. The strands beneath his fingers are soft with grease; they are all of them polluted in some way. James’s tongue drags up and down his length, his eyes lowered how, the dark shadow of his lashes, those damnably long lashes, laying sweetly against his cheekbone. The feeling in the center of him is like friction slowly building to a flame. For all the times they have done this, Francis ought to last much longer by now. There are many things he ought to be capable of.

“Christ.” Francis presses a hand to his mouth, the hand which James had kissed. His eyes are burning, James’s ministrations are beyond what he can bear, he is limp, helpless, and James’s mouth is a softness which moves him only by degrees. At last he squirms and sobs and comes with a muffled shout, his heels arcing off the floorboards and his thighs trembling beneath the steadiness of James’s hands. James does not pull away. Francis spends in the warmth of his mouth and through the deep still waters of what comes after, he feels James’s tongue slowly laving every last bit of him even as his cock goes soft.

Francis’s eyes are closed and remain so, his hand still sealed loosely over his lips. His breathing is as ragged past his fingers as if he has just completed some great feat. Even now the air in his cabin is bitter, and the wetness on his cheeks makes the cold burn.

The floorboards creak as James shifts. Francis does not need to open his eyes to know that James’s own needs have not been met. He does not need to see James’s face to know James does not plan to meet them. Ever enamored with self-sacrifice. Francis could very well hate him, and likely ought to.

“Come here,” Francis says on a thick tongue as James rises; he does not look up, but he feels the shift of his hard mattress as James settles beside him.

It is a simple matter, after everything, to pull him closer; to guide James with a hand at his name into the crook of his shoulder. James’s hand settles on himself, a practicality for which Francis, with his hands of clay, is grateful. He lacks the finesse to give James what he may desire but not to squeeze the portion of his leg over the knee, to stroke the warm back of his neck and feel the hot exhalation of James’s sighs.

It is not long before the sighs turn to moans, low and half-stifled against Francis’s neck, and if Francis has inadvertently given James a glimpse of something sacrosanct, now James pays him back in turn; the hand not busy with its essential work rises to clutch at Francis’s waistcoat, so hard he feels the scrape of nails through the layers of fabric. His hand quickens. His sounds become feeble, desperate things pressed into Francis’s shoulder, and with a shudder he comes. Francis turns his head and wipes what wetness clings at his lashes against the crown of James’s head.

It’s not until James has caught his breath and drawn forth a handkerchief to clean himself that Francis removes his hand from James’s nape. Already he feels the lull of the whiskey fading into a stiffness and a dull ache. Already he sees James’s mouth plucking into its familiar downward cant.

“Take a spare bunk on Terror for the night,” Francis says with what brusqueness he is yet capable of. “We’ll signal Erebus for an escort first thing tomorrow.”  

James’s mouth twists farther. He finishes straightening his clothes. “There’s no need for that.”

“No,” Francis agrees. “But do so all the same.”

James is about to argue. Francis recognizes the signs. But as their eyes meet for the first time since James was on his knees, the tautness in James’s expression slackens against all hopes and expectations.  

“First thing,” he repeats. "And no escort. I'll walk back in our hour of daylight."

Francis nods, able to recognize a fair bargain when he sees one. James’s lips are still slightly swollen. Francis thinks of the kiss, pressed so neatly to his palm. As delicate as something to be pressed in the pages of a book, translucent and forgotten.

“Goodnight, James,” he says, surprising them both as the other man's weight leaves the bed. For a moment James hangs suspended. 

“And you, Francis,” he says at last, and then Francis is alone.

For a long moment he is still. His hand lies cupped and open on his thigh. It is some time before he can bring himself to raise it to his clothes, to sully the memory balanced so delicately on his skin with the sundry miscellanea of readying himself for bed. His fingers fumble open his waistcoat and James’s mouth brushes every button.

It is a pitiable thing, but so are they all.

**Author's Note:**

> Is it OOC that Francis and James would sleep together before Francis gets all his sober character growth? Maybe. Am I gonna write it anyway because it's too damn juicy to pass up? _Absolutely._  
> 
> 
> Find me on [tumblr.](http://plaidmax.tumblr.com)


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